Just So You Know
by Crystal Haze
Summary: There's love, Remus, and there's what I've felt about you. Just so you know. SBRL.


**A/N: **A little something I thought of. Please tell me how it was.

**Disclaimer**: As much as I hate to admit it, I don't own Harry Potter. Do you see Sirius and Remus snogging each other senseless anywhere in the books?

**Just So You Know**

"You know, Remus, the day I first saw you, ten years ago, at Platform Nine and Three Quarters, I was with my family. They were hugging me and telling me how much they loved me and how much they'd miss me. You were all alone, and you looked small and thin and … lost. I watched you. You had a small bag of books and your clothes looked like they'd been used for generations. You didn't see me; you were too busy trying to look as inconspicuous as possible and figure out how to enter the Platform at the same time. I could never explain why I wanted so much to go up to you and hold your hand.

"Later, as I looked for a compartment on the train with James, whom I'd already gotten to know slightly, I passed yours. You were buried behind a book already, but your eyes travelled to the window. You watched the mothers give their children fleeting final kisses before the train left; the fathers wave back at their wards, who shouted goodbyes from their windows; the brothers and sisters cry and run alongside the train, trying to keep up. "There's Frank, my dad's friend's son, let's sit with him," James had told me, interrupting my train of thought. I went with him, but I looked back at you. What was it about you that made me want to stay behind?

"Then again, when we reached Hogwarts and got off the train, it started raining. You sat at one corner of the boat in which we crossed the Lake; you were huddled up, arms wrapped about your knees, shivering slightly. I wanted to put my cloak about your shoulders; to warm your hand with mine.

"So it was. Just so you know.

"It was in second year that we started to become friends. I loved to hear you talk. I loved that quaint sense of humour that was so – _Remus_ – to me. I loved the way you came to 'tell me off' when I played particularly nasty pranks and you didn't leave me till you'd whacked a bit of sense into my arrogant head. I don't think I was supposed to love it, but I ended up loving it anyway.

"But there was something odd about you, we thought – James, Peter and myself. And then one day, we put two and two together. You were a werewolf.

"People say feeling pity is what makes you human. If it is so, I don't know if it's worth it. Thinking about you, a social outcast, an object of terror, left with no control over your senses once each month – it made my heart ache like it had never ached before. And to see you avoid us when you learnt we'd discovered your secret- was unbearable. You'd disappear into the library for long stretches, you'd sit at a corner seat away from the rest of us, and you wouldn't look us in the eye even we went to talk to you. I – I wanted to put my arm about those thin shoulders and whisper in your ears – 'It's alright'.

"There. Just so you know.

"In third year, we'd already started to get quite a reputation- for all the wrong reasons. The Marauders, we took to calling ourselves. As we'd prowl the school by night, squeezed under James' Invisibility Cloak, I'd fell your body pressed to mine. Sometimes, you'd clutch my arm to press closer. It would make me tremble. Once, on one of those midnight escapades, we came across that strange mirror. The Mirror of Erised, it was called. I told all of you that when I looked in, I saw Sirius Black, the Auror. But I lied. I saw you.

"It was you, Remus. Just so you know.

"We had that ball in fourth year. The Christmas Ball. I suppose you've forgotten how James, frustrated at being refused point-blank by Lily, and my laziness to ask anyone out, jokingly suggested that he take Peter and … and you go with me. But your answer shocked us all. You blushed and you told us that you – _you!_ – were going with someone else. The number of times I tried to coax you into telling me who it was – oh, it makes me smile now … In the end, of course, I did get a girl, all of us did. I was _the_ Sirius Black, after all, whom girls were queuing up to get. I don't even remember her name now.

"But I remember watching you dance – oh, I remember. I hung on desperately to your every move, watching from the side, away from the dance floor. I didn't miss a single _sweet nothing _you whispered to your pretty partner. She was ecstatic to have you, of course. Who wouldn't be? You were so irresistibly _perfect_. You passed your hand about her waist; she snuggled closer, looking adoringly up at you. You smiled at her; there was something so horribly familiar about that smile – I couldn't take it any longer. I sneaked away to the dormitory hours before any of you came up. "I was feeling a bit down," I told all of you in explanation the next day. I didn't even bother speaking to the girl I'd gone with - she'd had a nice enough time, dancing the night away, having given me up for useless right from the start of the evening. But that night, even as you and the rest crept up to bed, you last of all, tired but immensely happy, I lay awake, listening.

"So it was, Remus. Just so you know.

"Fifth year saw a turning point for us all. We – James, Peter and I – managed at last to become Animagi. On the first full moon night following this, we came down with you before you transformed. I was awestruck. I'd never seen anything like it before.

"You – _you_ – Remus Lupin – turned into a monster before our very eyes.

"It wasn't easy restraining you, even for both Prongs and myself, while Peter zoomed in and out between our legs putting in a nibble here and a scratch there whenever possible. But gradually, very, very slowly, you took to mastering your emotions. You were more human than you'd ever been on those nights. The next morning, after our nightly explorations, I'd always be the first to wake up. I'd lie on my chest, resting my chin on my palm, and I'd watch you. I'd draw your clothes about your naked body. I'd watch the wounds on your chest. And I'd want to lick those wounds and kiss the pain away.

"There you are, Remus. Just so you know.

"Thinking about what happened in sixth year still doesn't let me sleep. That fateful night, after Gryffindor won the Quidditch Final. We nicked some stuff from the kitchen and I had…a bit more mead than I should have. And I started to sing…to you. I don't know what I was thinking. _Do You Want To Know A Secret, _and in a room packed with people! And I – I kissed you. Of course, I covered up later: the easy explanation – I was dead drunk and everything. Maybe I was, but I remember that kiss. It tasted of – wild honey and tenderness and the infinite sweetness that was you. With maybe a bit of mead.

"I spent sleepless nights wondering if this would mean the end of our friendship. Even months later, when we had long come back to normal, I'd see you looking at me with an odd expression on your face – almost as if you _knew_. That it was true.

"And, hell, it was. Just so you know.

"Seventh year passed like it had never been. James started seeing Lily, and Lily – she knew. Girls are always good with that sort of thing. Feminine intuition and stuff. She'd give me those funny looks when she caught me watching you. We never talked about it, but I knew she felt for me.

"I remember the times you noticed that I was surly and depressed and you came to talk to me. You had that way about you. I never talked about my life to anyone, but I did to you. I told you about my family and how they were steeped in the Dark Arts and how I hated them. You listened, and you held my hand, and that was enough for me. And then one day came the end of it all. I was to go to James' house to stay, and we would be attending the same Auror Training Institute. You were going somewhere north to train to become a Professor. I nodded briefly to you in farewell, but you pulled me into a hug. And I died inside.

"There's love, Remus, and there's what I've felt about you. Just so you know."

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